First introduced at the 10th-anniversary celebration of Riot Games, the card game Legends of Runeterra quickly attracted significant attention from the community. With its engaging gameplay and unique art style, this game breathed new life into characters already famous within the League of Legends universe. Additionally, Legends of Runeterra is viewed as a useful tool for Riot to develop the storyline within the League of Legends universe.
Therefore, this game was once highly anticipated to be Riot’s super title or at least lead the card game genre. However, after more than three years since its launch, the game has fallen into a state of “desolation,” with very few people following Legends of Runeterra. According to statistics from Twitchtracker, the average number of viewers for this game in November 2023 was only 359. In fact, since December 2022, this number has never exceeded 1000 viewers.
In comparison to another long-established card game, Hearthstone, the aforementioned metrics for Legends of Runeterra are indeed minuscule. Specifically, the average number of viewers for Hearthstone in November 2023 reached 15.6 thousand. This indicates that Legends of Runeterra is completely lagging behind in the card game genre, and Riot needs to find a way to “save” this game.
The approach Riot has chosen is to add a link to Legends of Runeterra in the League of Legends client. Recently, Riot has been discovered experimenting with this option to attract new players or bring back former players to Legends of Runeterra. Currently, Riot is only testing this option in the Oceanic server.
One of the reasons Legends of Runeterra has fallen into such a “lonely” state is that its content is not truly engaging. The game has too many “key words” with important effects appearing on cards, weapons, champion cards, etc. Without a sufficient understanding of Legends of Runeterra, players find it almost impossible to follow the game’s developments when watching its content.
Therefore, alongside introducing Legends of Runeterra in the League of Legends client, Riot should also consider simplifying the game’s complexity. This would help new players acclimate to it more easily instead of being overwhelmed by too much information. Hopefully, Riot will make the right decisions in the future to successfully “rescue” this once highly anticipated game.